Jason eBook

“And yet, Mademoiselle,” said he, gently,
“I think there are such men alive to-day, if
only one will look for them. Remember, they were
not common even in Bayard’s time. Oh yes,
I think there are preux chevaliers nowadays, only
perhaps they don’t go about things in quite the
same fashion. Other times, other manners,”
he said again.

“Do you know any such men?” she demanded,
facing him with shadowy eyes.

And he said: “Yes, I know men who are in
all ways as honorable and as high-hearted as Bayard
was. In his place they would have acted as he
did, but nowadays one has to practise heroism much
less conspicuously—­in the little things
that few people see and that no one applauds or writes
books about. It is much harder to do brave little
acts than brave big ones.”

“Yes.” she agreed, slowly. “Oh
yes, of course.”

But there was no spirit in her tone, rather a sort
of apathy. Once more the leaves overhead swayed
in the breeze, opened a tiny rift, and the little
trembling ray of sunshine shot down to her where she
sat. She stretched out one hand cup-wise, and
the sunbeam, after a circling gyration, darted into
it and lay there like a small golden bird panting,
as it were, from fright.

“If I were a painter,” said Ste.
Marie, “I should be in torture and anguish of
soul until I had painted you sitting there on a stone
bench and holding a sunbeam in your hand. I don’t
know what I should call the picture, but I think it
would be something figurative—­symbolic.
Can you think of a name?”

Coira O’Hara looked up at him with a slight
smile, but her eyes were gloomy and full of dark shadows.
“It might be called any one of a great number
of things, I should think,” said she. “Happiness—­belief—­illusion.
See! The sunbeam is gone.”

* * * *
*

XXI

A MIST DIMS THE SHINING STAR

Ste. Marie remained in his room all the rest
of that day, and he did not see Mlle. O’Hara
again, for Michel brought him his lunch and the old
Justine his dinner. For the greater part of the
time he sat in bed reading, but rose now and then
and moved about the room. His wound seemed to
have suffered no great inconvenience from the morning’s
outing. If he stood or walked too long it burned
somewhat, and he had the sensation of a tight band
round the leg; but this passed after he had lain down
for a little while, or even sat in a chair with the
leg straight out before him; so he knew that he was
not to be crippled very much longer, and his thoughts
began to turn more and more keenly upon the matter
of escape.